WINTER'S BONE

WINTER'S BONE arrived in the UK from Sundance and Berlin covered in praise for its strong central performances and gritty portrayal of middle-American rural poverty.

The heroine of the film is seventeen-year old Ree Dolly played with impressive authority and conviction by Jennifer Lawrence. Ree is the daughter of an absent felon father and mentally ill mother, and has been forced to take on the parenting of her younger brother and sister. This involves a delicate balance of learning how to live on scraps and handouts without losing a sense of pride. This fragile existence is put under threat when bail bondsmen threaten to seize Ree’s house and woods unless she can find her father and bring him to jail. One could almost regard the search for the father as a MacGuffin – an excuse for the Ree to take us on a journey into the wider community. Because that’s what this film ultimately is – an excuse to explore a community full of adults that have responded to the lack of economic opportunity in the Ozarks, and turned to drug-using, drug-dealing and violence. Every single adult Ree turns to for help refuses to take the responsibility befitting an adult. And while, to spoil the ending, she does ultimately keep her house – and there is palpable relief that she won’t be separated from her brother and sister – that relief is ultimately false. Because we leave Ree in exactly the same position that we found her in at the start of the movie – living in poverty, forced into maturity before her time, and martyring herself for her family. We’ve basically just seen a young girl literally beaten to a pulp in her fight to stand still – just maintain.

So, WINTER'S BONE is no pleasure-ride, but it is an impressively made and well-acted movie, and that gives a certain pleasure of its own. By persuading the people from Ozarks to let her use their houses, and to appear as extras and minor characters, director Debra Granik imbues her film with a rarely seen sense of authenticity and sympathy. To be crude, even when viewed from the comparative luxury of your art-house cinema seat, this film never feels like poverty-porn. Is the movie flawless? No. I found the black-and-white animated dream sequence gauche and what should have played as a grimly horrific scene on a river was so over-the-top I laughed. Nonetheless, this is a powerful film – a film that creates and sustains a menacing tone, and that contains fleeting glimpses of genuine familial tenderness in the most unforgiving of circumstances.

WINTER'S BONE played Berlin 2010 where it won the CICAE Award and the Reader Jury Prize of hte Tagesspiegel. It also played Sundance 2010 where it won the Grand Jury Prize - Dramatic and the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. It was released earlier this year in the US and is currently on release in the UK. It opens in France on November 3rd.

Tsuki no Waltz (月のワルツ, 2004)

The NHK’s long-running program Minna no Uta has been a great showcase for musical talent and talented animators and directors since the early 1960s. Some of the most prolific contributors to Minna no Uta include some of the brightest stars of the animation world including Koji Nanke, Tadahiko Horiguchi, Keizo Kira, Sadao Tsukioka, Keiko Tanaka, Taku Furukawa, Yoji Kuri, Fumio Ooi, and Seiichi Hayashi .

My favourite Minna no Uta music video of the past decade is Atsuko Ishizuka’s Tsuki no Waltz (月のワルツ/Waltz of the Moon). Ishizuka (いしづか あつこ, b. 1981) was still a student when her animated shorts CREMONA (2003) and Gravitation (引力/ Inryoku, 2003) caught the attention of the NHK. Gravitation was featured as part of the Digista Best Selection for 2003. By 2004, Ishizuka had already been snatched up by Madhouse as an assistant director, but the NHK was able to negotiate for Ishizuka to direct Tsuki no Waltz.

The haunting song was composed and sung by the talented young artist Mio Isayama (諌山実生, b. 1980) with lyrics by Reiko Yukawa (湯川れいこ, b. 1939). The song is about the strange things that can happen on a moonlit night. A young girl encounters an elderly man sitting in a moonlit alleyway and becomes transfixed by an Alice in Wonderland themed mechanical clock. Looking into the blue eyes of the man she is transported into the surreal realm of the imagination.

Ishizuka picks up on the song’s Alice in Wonderland theme and depicts a young girl being transported down a rabbit hole where she encounters a giant version of the White Rabbit sipping red wine. The girl runs through a labyrinth of surreal imagery until she comes to a sliver of a moon – which resembles the one Ishizuka used in the title of her film Gravitation (see the first image of my review of Gravitation). The old man appears and reaches out his hand to the girl and she gets transported away on the crescent moon up to the clouds. In the clouds, the old man and the girl ride the crescent moon like a ship as the White Rabbit  grows bigger and metamorphosizes into a cathedral-like structure. The moon ship sails the pair into the White Rabbit and through to the galaxy on the other side where the girl stands on the centre of  a now giant clock and faces the elderly man who stands on the hand of the clock as it spins backwards. The old man transforms into a young prince and the girl runs to him to embrace. She slips, but the young man catches her by the hand in a romantic gesture.

The romanticism of the moment is emphasized by the grey clouds transforming into a wonderland of mystical flowers. The film ends by returning to the clock, then showing the couple floating off together. The final images are of the empty alleyway (the old man and girl are no longer there) and the city, suggesting that there is no end to this dream and the girl is really flying away from the metropolis into the heavens with her young prince.

 The crescent moon, which was also referenced in Gravitation

'Alice' gets whisked into wonderland through 

the old man's blue eyes in this wonderful transition sequence.

While there are some similarities to her earlier film Gravitation, this is a much more elaborate and visually sumptuous film. Perhaps most impressive are the beautiful, seamless transitions such as the girl being transported into Wonderland through the blue eyes of the elderly man (see image above) and the red wine transforming into a labyrinth entrapping the girl (see top image). The logic of the film is entirely ruled by dreams and metamorphosis. The matching of animation movement to the rhythms of the song makes the film particularly engaging. The opening and closing music sound like a wind-up music box and is matched to sequences with the mechanical clock. The sections of the song where the music swells are also paired with dramatic movements onscreen, such as the White Rabbit growing and metamorphosizing and the climax of the dramatic action of the film occuring during the musical bridge.

 The mechanical clock

Tsuki no Waltz and Ishizuka’s early shorts give us a taste of the unique, surreal vision of Ishizuka as an artist. At Madhouse, she has worked on a number of successful commercial anime TV series including a guilty pleasure of mine – the Nana anime series (2006-2007). Her work on episodes 11 and 12 of the Aoi Bungaku Series (青い文学シリーズ , 2009) is brilliant – especially in the use of colour. I am quite excited about seeing Madhouse’s co-production with Warner Bros. Supernatural: the Animation (see trailer) in the New Year which Ishizuka is co-directing with Shigeyuki Miya. While I enjoy the projects she has been involved with at Madhouse so far, I have a feeling that the best is yet to come. Once she has put in her time and is finally given the chance to helm a feature film of her own inception, I wouldn’t be surprised if she is capable of producing works on par with the creative genius of Kon Satoshi’s Paprika (2006).

Related Posts:

Gravitation

Anime Alice in Wonderland

Furukawa's Minna no Uta animation

Tsuki no Waltz can be found  on:

Minna no Uta Best Hit Collection

Other DVDs related to Atsuko Ishizuka:

Aoi Bungaku Series Kumo no Ito / Jigoku Hen

Animation

Piano no Mori Standard Edition

Animation

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2010

Gravitation (引力, 2003)

During her days as a student at Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music, Atsuko Ishizuka (いしづか あつこaka 石塚敦子, b. 1981) made some animated shorts that caught the eye of both the NHK and Madhouse (her employer since graduation). Gravitation (引力 /Inryoku, 2003) was one of them and it was featured that same year by the NHK on their Digista program. 

 An example of her uses of extremely high and low angles.

Gravitation is a dream-like film in which a young woman rises out of bed on a dark night and finds her hair being pulled strangely upwards as if the moon had some kind of gravitational pull. The girl steps outside and rides a glass elevator up the side of a skyscraper. From the perspective of the top of the building, she looks down at a cityscape reminiscent of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) and witnesses an old-fashioned car crashing on the side of the expressway. The shards of glass float up as if being pulled by the same moon gravity as the girl’s hair. Soon, the girl’s dog and the car are all being pulled upwards as well. The girl falls from the building only to have the force from the moon suddenly pull her in the other direction. As she jets towards the moon, she is able to rescue her dog and holds him in her arms. The film ends with a spinning close up of the girl holding her dog and as a mass of flowers swirl past her and gather around the moon, nestling it like a ball that has fallen into a rich garden of flowers.

The only hints of colour are the streetlights of this Metropolis-esque setting 

(notice how her hair is being pulled by the moon's force)

I find this film visually captivating. The main reason for this is Ishizuka’s striking, yet minimatlistic use of white on black with only a hint of yellows and reds for the streetlights. In some scenes, such as when the girl’s hair begins to be pulled by the gravitational force of the moon, the sketched white lines are finely filigreed as if made from the silk of a spider’s web. Ishikawa plays with unusual and interesting camera angles and distances. It’s a fascinating mixture of the cute (the girl and her puppy dog), the eclectic (a pre-WWII car), the futuristic (the setting), and the surreal (the gravitational pull of the moon, a sky full of flowers).　

 An extreme close up as the girl soaring through the air - notice the moon in the background.

The mood of the piece is enhanced by the compelling musical score composed for the film by Yoshiyuki Yamada (山田善之 – at least I’m guessing it’s Yoshiyuki – I can’t find him on the web to confirm the reading of his given name). There are a number of stylistic elements and motifs in Gravitation that get repeated in her NHK short Tsuki no Waltz (月のワルツ, 2004). The female protagonists look very similar in the face and hair and character movements. The moon is repeated as a main motif in both films, and she also repeats the image of flowers filling the starlit sky.  There are so many similarities that I wonder if the NHK suggested that she repeat these elements in her first Minna no Uta project.

 The moon in a nest of flowers - the flower motif gets repeated in Tsuki no Waltz.

A beautiful film full of the promise of good things to come for Ishizuka’s future as an animator at Madhouse. More on that tomorrow when I review Tsuki no Waltz.

Related Posts:
Tsuki no Waltz
Anime Alice in Wonderland

Digista Vol VII

Madhouse Projects that Atsuko Ishizuka has worked on:

Aoi Bungaku Series Kumo no Ito / Jigoku Hen

Animation

Nana 1 [Regular-Priced Edition]

Animation

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2010

Random DVD Round-Up 5 - THE BOUNTY HUNTER

Andy Tennant (FOOL'S GOLD, HITCH, SWEET HOME ALABAMA) is a seeming one-man factory in churning out romantic-comedies pinned on an implausible central conceit. In this risible flick, the conceit is that Gerard Butler is a bail bonds-man with a gambling habit, charged to bring his ex-wife (Jennifer Aniston) to jail. She's been had up on a fender-bender charge, but was too busy to turn up to court because she's a hard-nosed investigative journalist. ((rolls eyes)). The resulting "comedy" should play as a screwball caper with two wise-cracking stars wheeling their way through organised crime and driving through America. What actually happens is that the two romantic leads have zero chemistry and the creaky, paper-thin plot can't compensate. The only way to watch this flick is on fast-forward - and if I tell you I watched the whole thing in the "flight-safe" window of a fifty minute AMS-LCY flight, you'll get what I mean.

Additional tags: Sarah Thorp, Oliver Bokelberg, 

THE BOUNTY HUNTER was released in Spring 2010 and is available to rent/buy.

Random DVD Round-Up 4 - LEAP YEAR

LEAP YEAR is a piss-poor, predictable, charmless romantic comedy penned by serial offenders, Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont, and directed by Anand Tucker (HILLARY AND JACKIE) who should know better. Amy Adams plays an uptight realtor who is so tired of waiting for her medic boyfriend to propose that she follows him to Ireland to propose to him on Leap Day. This being a romantic "comedy", bad weather and other mishaps conspire to keep her away from him and in the company of a good-looking local lad (Matthew Goode - passable Irish accent). He's obviously a huge cynic, having been cruelly dumped by his ex- but traipsing around in the Irish countryside results in the two leads falling in love. There is nothing in the film that moves beyond cliche and predictability. Indeed, it is deeply ironic that Goode's character teases Amy's character for being "diddly-i" about such a cheesy tradition as girls proposing on a Leap Year, when this movie is peddling exactly that same vision of the Emerald Isle as a place of wide old yokels and crumbling castles. Not even Amy Adams intrinsic charm can save this thing. Avoid at all costs.

Additional tags: Randy Edelman, Adam Scott, Deborah Kaplan, Harry Elfont, Anand Tucker.

LEAP YEAR was released in Spring 2010 and is available to rent/buy.

Random DVD Round-Up 3 - DATE NIGHT

There's something almost impressive about the fact that director Shawn Levy has taken two of the funniest comedians working today - Steve Carell and Tina Fey - and create a romantic comedy so utterly joyless and inauthentic. I honestly would not have believed it possible. This movie misses the mark so badly it's like the PEARL HARBOUR of romantic-comedies. Fey and Carell play a happily married but tired couple whose regular date night turns into a caper movie when they are mistaken for a couple that's blackmailing a local politician. Chased by organised crime and some bent coppers, it just so handily happens that Mrs Suburbs was a realtor to a super-buff Mission Impossible type special agent. Whenever I get mistakenly chased down by gansters, I am definitely going to ensure that I too can call on my friendly neighbourhood James Bond type. Anyways, there are shenanigans, and the couple turn out to be far more plucky and ingenious than is plausible, and it all ends with Tina Fey in a strip club. The only reason you might possibly watch this flick is for the James Franco-Mila Kunis scene in which they show the grown-ups how to do it. Presumably you can just you-tube that clip.

DATE NIGHT was released in April 2010. It is available on DVD and on iTunes.

Additional tags: Jimmi Simpson, Josh Klausner, Leighton Meester

Random DVD Round-Up 2 - PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME

PRINCE OF PERSIA: SANDS OF TIME is a movie that is easy to mock. It's based on a video game; features a bunch of Western actors bronzed up to play medieval Persian warlords; is full of hoky CGI and time-travel; and basically is about as credible as Ed Balls candidature for the Labour leadership. Think ALADDIN on steroids. But I have to say that it's not entirely unwatchable.

A newly buff Jake Gyllenhaal plays Dastan, a street urchin (the very need to use such a ridiculous word as urchin should clue you into the basic nonsense-level here) plucked from poverty to become a Prince by the kindly king. Years later and Dastan is framed for the murder of his father, leaving two genuinely princely brothers and uncle rule in his stead. The rest of the film sees him try to find out who was really out to power-grab, although the casting of Ben Kingsley as the moustache-twirling Uncle is a give-away. The task is made easier by the fact that he's found a mysterious Macguffin whose sand can turn back time. Handily, this plot device comes complete with stuck-up but beautiful Princess-guardian, as played by Gemma Arterton.

Essentially, this is all hokum but enlivened by some really odd casting. Toby Kebbell turns up as a royal brother, for instance, and Alfred Molina is hillarious as an ostrich-race-running medieval gangsta. And what on earth is Mike Newell, of FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL fame, doing directing this thing? Anyway, I have nothing to say in my defence. This movie is rubbish, but I enjoyed it, albeit fast forwarding through the action scenes. There's something almost touching about how earnestly Gyllenhaal et al play their scenes, and Alfred Molina is worth the price of the DVD rental alone.

PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME was released in May 2010 and is now available on DVD and on iTunes.

Additional tags: John Seale, Harry Gregson-Williams, Boaz Yaking, Doug Miro, Carlo Bernard, Jordan Mechner, Steve Toussaint, Richard Coyle, Ronald Picckup, Reece Ritchie

Random DVD Round Up 1 - EXIT THROUGH THE GIFTSHOP

One-trick pony mockumentary in which notorious street-artist Banksy sends up the modern art world by showcasing nutty video-voyeuer turned artist Thierry Guetta. Guetta starts out behind the camera, documenting the early days of street art in LA, creating a mammoth collection of unedited tapes. He then morphs into an artist, apparently on Banksy's urging, creating works of suspiciously derivative quality and creating an art-world hoop-la in the process. Presumably this has all been faked, and Banksy is trying to make a point about how credulous the punters will be when faced with the latest fashion. Which is all very plausible, but hardly a radical thought, and certainly not enough to sustain a feature length film.

Additional tags: Banksy, tom fulford, chris king,

EXIT THROUGH THE GIFTSHOP played Sundance and Berlin 2010. It opened in the UK, US and Russia earlier this year and opens in Germany on October 2010. It is also available on DVD and on iTunes.

Overlooked DVD of the month - DOGTOOTH

George Orwell believed that the first step toward tyranny was to brutalise language. If the prisoner-citizen cannot articulate his needs he will be more docile. DOGTOOTH opens with such a brutalisation. Three teenagers are kept prisoner by their parents in a gated house. They are taught false meanings for words; to fear vicious monsters in the outside world; and to sublimate their desires. There is no reason given for their imprisonment. Just as in 1984, power is exercised simply because it can be. The logical consequences of absolute parental control are both tragic and absurd. The teenagers are so naive they cannot recognise sexual abuse. When presented with an opportunity of escape, they cannot take initiative. But there is dark comedy too. The father asks if they would like to hear grandfather sing. He puts on a record by Frank Sinatra. The children are in doubt that this is the voice of their grandfather and nod in agreement as the father “translates” their grandfather’s words, exhorting the children to be obedient, from English into Greek.

Giorgos Lanthimos’ film is beautifully shot, logically argued, and deeply, deeply sinister. That is not to say that it is enjoyable, or that I would recommend it for everyone. I went through three phases watching the film. At first, I was intrigued by the concept but turned off by its refusal to explain and bored by watching teenagers effectively do nothing all day. And then, as the logic built upon itself and the situations became more perverse and tragic, I became hypnotised by the film. And finally, I gave in to the absurdity and found it all bleakly funny.

DOGTOOTH played Cannes 2009 where it won the Un Certain Regard award. It also played Toronto, Sitges and London 2009. It opened in Greece and France last year and in Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK, Russia, Norway, Portugal and the US earlier this year. It is now available on DVD and on iTunes.

Tochka Works 2001-2010

The collaborative art team Tochka (トーチカ) has had a distinctive online presence for many years now.  Their creative method of animating with light has inspired many artists around the world to make their own lightning doodles from Lichtfaktor here in Germany to the artists behind the 2007 Sprint commercial. Tochka’s short videos have been shared extensively on the internet, but CALF’s second volume in their DVD series Japanese Independent Animators gives fans a sense of the history of the PiKA PiKA Lightning Doodle movement.  Like Maya Yonesho's Daumenreise and Rinpa Eishidan's videos, Tochka's PiKA PiKA  films belong to the tradition of collaborative art.

Takeshi Nagata and Kazue Monno, the creative duo that make up Tochka – came up with their lightning doodle animation method in 2005 and christened it PiKA PiKA. The Japanese language is replete with evocative onomatopoeias – words whose sound suggests their meaning  – like "buzz buzz" or "drip drop" in English.  “Pika pika” (ピカピカ), as any fan of Pikachu from Pokemon can tell you, is associated with lightning or flashes of light.

The seemingly magical images of people drawing with coloured lights is actually fairly easy for the amateur animator to achieve. In fact, Tochka came up with the method as a way of teaching the principles of stop motion animation to a workshop that ranged in ages from 3 to 60. As the accompanying booklet explains, one only needs a camera with long exposure capabilities, a flashlight, and a nice black background. While the shutter is open, the “animators” draw shapes repetitively in the air with their flashlights. When the images are played back consecutively at normal speed, the light animation comes to life.

The use of drawing with light in photography is believed to have originated with the avant-garde artist Man Ray in 1935 when he used his pen light to create the self portrait Space Writings (check out the interactive material accessing this work at The Smithsonian). Another famous practitioner of light animation in photography was Pablo Picasso, as you can see in his collaborative photographs with Gjon Mili (examples here and here).

Tochka has taken the artistic concept of photographing points of light at a low shutter speed and married it to contemporary technologies and to their political beliefs in the democratization of art and the use of art to bring people of all walks of life together in a harmonious activity. Their films are not only animations, but also a documentation of their travels around the world where they collaborate with school children, artists at festivals, and even just people they meet while walking the streets of neighbourhoods from Indonesia to Canada. They also use music by local artists on the soundtracks which adds to each film’s flavour as a document of a particular place and time.  This interactivity between filmmakers, musicians, participants, and viewers is truly unique.

Their marriage of their light doodles with music reminded me of Norman McLaren’s imaginative film Boogie-Doodle (1941). A further reminder of McLaren came while I was viewing the “Jumping” section of their PiKA PiKA in Yamagata (2008) video. McLaren’s Oscar-winning film Neighbours (1952) used an animation technique which Grant Munro coined pixilation where people are essentially transformed into stop motion puppets. The Jumping sequence in PiKA PiKA in Yamagata takes the Jumping sequence from Neighbours and multiplies it by more than a dozen as you can see in these screencaps:

McLaren's Neighbours (1952)

PiKA PiKA in Yamagata (2008)

Tochka’s PiKA PiKA films are fun to watch and look as though they were fun to make by the participants. It’s like an animated form of mural-painting or graffiti art.  This was suggested to me by their compilation film PiKA PiKA (2007) which has scenes where both graffiti and lightning doodles are being created simultaneously.

The behind-the-scenes footage of their shoots in the Osaka neighbourhood of Naniwa-ku earlier this year demonstrates how PiKA PiKA can be used in a positive way to document the people and places of a neighbourhood. While in their early films the faces of the “animators” with the lights were obscured, in this footage they light the faces of the local people they encounter during the night shoots while they frame them with lightning doodles. This documentary footage is particularly magical for the way that it shows the transformation of the participants from portrait subjects to active participants. The delight on their faces to see the results of the animation process played back to them from a laptop is truly a joy to behold.

Another element of Tochka’s work that I enjoy is their foregrounding of the process of animation and the tools they use to achieve it. This seems to belong to their desire to share art, rather than simply being privileged practitioners of it. The opening sequences of their films often document the people and the process they used to make the film. For example, The Lovely Memories (2009) is a documentary of an artistic workshop, an animation, and a loving tribute to Lomography cameras (famed for their colourful, soft focus images) all rolled into one (read an interview with Tochka about shooting with the Diana F+ and Instant Back).

This DVD is by no means a complete works of Tochka who have done a wide range of stop motion films over the years for both commercial and artistic purposes. The DVD’s main focus is the PiKA PiKA output since 2005. However, in the special features section of the DVD they do include one of their early stop motion animations Build (2001) which screened on a massive wall in Kobe to commemorate the earthquake – it is a disturbing and fascinating film which playfully references early computer games like Pong and Tetris. 

Other extras include a slideshow of 100 PiKA PiKA stills and a behind-the-scenes featurette of a PiKA PiKA workshop at Suito Osaka (2009,. There is also a short snippet shot for Design Tide (2007), a long edit of PiKA PiKA in Indonesia (2008), and the trailer for PiKA PiKA in Kanazawa (2008). 

Tochka Works 2001-2010 can be purchased online at CALF. The shop is currently Japanese only but an English version is in the works. Alternatively, try contacting them via e-mail or Facebook. The DVD is bilingual Japanese – English.  To learn more about Tochka, visit their homepage.

UPDATE 13 October 2010: CALF's English language webshop is now up and running!

DVD now available in France from HEEZA

Related Posts:

 Mirai Mize Works 2003-2010

Atsushi Wada’s Day of Nose

Kei Oyama’s Hand Soap

Maya Yonesho Profile
Rinpa Eshidan

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2010

Mirai Mizue Works 2003-2010

Last month CALF, a new indie DVD label representing Japanese independent animators, held its official launch at the International Hiroshima Animation Festival. The first two DVDS to be released by CALF feature representative works by abstract animator Mirai Mizue (水江未来) and PIKA PIKA animators Tochka (トーチカ). In October, CALF plans to release DVDs of work by Atsushi Wada (和田淳), whose film In a Pig’s Eye (わからないブタ/Wakaranai Buta, 2010) won the top prize at Fatoche on the weekend, and by Kei Oyama (大山慶) whose film Hand Soap won a prize at Oberhausen earlier this year.

Mirai Mizue’s debut animation Fantastic Cell (2003), which he made during his student years at Tama Art University, was extremely well-received by the animation community. In this film Mizue debuted his distinctive “cell” animation (not to be confused with cel animation) style in which he uses an organic cell as the base shape of his abstract figures. The cells join together or split apart forming a wide array of creatures from the smallest amoeba to jellyfish and finally into a humanoid creature. The original film used the distinctive sounds of Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz of the Flowers” from The Nutcracker Suite. Unfortunately, CALF was unable to afford the rights to the music for the DVD, but one can enjoy the full experience by playing the video from Mirai’s website simultaneously with the DVD video.

Mirai’s pairing of animation with music is reminiscent of the ground-breaking films of Oskar Fischinger and Norman McLaren. Mizue himself had actually not yet seen the work of these two artists when he made Fantastic Cell, and he points to early Disney films like Fantasia (1940), The Old Mill (1937), and Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom (1953) as having influenced his interest in the relationship between animation and music. The Fantasia influence is certainly apparent in his choice of music as it also features Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz of the Flowers”.

When I first encountered Mirai Mizue’s work on the internet I mistook it for CG animation. His illustration style is so detailed and precise, that one can hardly believe that he has hand drawn every single frame. Furthermore, the digital artifacts produced by low resolution uploads blurred the detail that mark the work as being hand drawn. The high-resolution of the CALF DVD allows the viewer to see every detail of the image as the artist intended it and the result is spectacular. Check out the trailer:

In the Special Bonus Interview feature on the DVD, there is a wonderful timelapse sequence showing Mizue’s process for his “cell” animations. He begins by outlining the images with a pencil then fills them in with aqueous pens (black and colour). The images are then scanned and edited into an animation on the computer. He never uses the computer for paint work – even though his geometric animation such as Modern (2010) and Metropolis (2009) are actually well-suited to computer animation. 

In addition to geometric animation and “cell” animation, Mizue has also been dabbling in what he calls water-surface animation. He first attempted this in 2003 in a film called Minamo in which he set up a camera over a water tray with an illuminated white background (presumably an animation table) and experimented with the flow of aqueous ink over the surface of the water. He manipulated the ink by blowing with straws or stirring with toothpicks and used stop motion animation techniques to shoot the resulting effects. Not satisfied with this first attempt, he tried again in 2009 with the film Blend. This time, he used oil ink in order to see if he could control the stream of ink better. He modestly claims in the DVD booklet that he is still not satisfied and will continue refining his techniques, but these were among my favourite films on the DVD. While the kaleidoscope-like effects are fascinating, I particularly enjoyed the close up shots of the swirling ink. In combination with the experimental score, the effect is mesmerizing. 

The DVD also includes a very different type of experimental film Adamski (2008) which he shot along the Tama River. Citing Jan Svankmejer as a key influence on him as an animator, I believe that the film’s title is a reference to George Adamski, the man who claimed to have taken photographs of UFOs. This supposition is bolstered by Mirai’s statement that he wanted to shoot a film from the POV of a UFO. Like a Takashi Ito film, Adamski is made up entirely of a series of photographs which he shot all on one day. Mirai draws connections between the various graphic patterns made by fences, hydro lines, and buildings in the area. In this animation he also demonstrates a fascination for various textures: leaves in a gutter, pebbles, flowers in a garden, rope – it is a truly poetic film visually. 

The real centerpiece of the DVD for me is his film Jam (2009) which takes the “cell” animation techniques that he uses in Fantastic Cell (2003), Lost Utopia (2007), and Devour Dinner (2008) and ramps it up a couple of notches. In the liner notes he explains that he had been disappointed in the quality of his animation for Devour Dinner, which had been made to deadline. With Jam he challenged himself to make a film that made movement the centerpiece of the film.

Watching Jam on a big screen can be an overwhelming experience because, as the title suggests, the “cell” creatures are literally jammed onto the screen. Every inch of the screen is filled with creatures big and small who wriggle and slide in time with the music. The concept behind the film is that the more increasingly varied the soundtrack becomes, the greater number of creatures and movement should be on screen. It begins with a limited pallette of black, white, and red, and increases the colours as well as the movement endings in a symphony of shapes, sounds, and movements. This is a film that requires repeat viewing in order to fully take in the complexity of the illustrations.

One of his latest films Playground (2010) demonstrates how keen Mizue is to hold onto his signature visual style of “cell” animation, while at the same time challenging himself to keep evolving as an artist. Playground has a much softer look than his earlier cell films because he used a paint brush with India ink in addition to his aqueous pens. He speaks in the liner notes of having been influenced by the paintings of Joan Miro that he saw in Barcelona. To be sure, the influence of Miro is there in not only his commitment to abstract image and movement, but also in his choice of colour palette. The varied selection of animation Mirai has produced in his early years as an artist makes for very inspired viewing and bodes well for the future of art animation in Japan.

Mirai Mizue’s DVD can be purchased for the very reasonable price of ￥2,800 (in comparison: Ghibli DVDs cost almost ￥5,000 apiece) at CALF’s ONLINE SHOP – which is currently only available in Japanese but will be made available in English in the near future. The DVD itself is fully Japanese-English bilingual and region-free. 

You can also contact CALF by e-mail or via their Facebook Profile.

UPDATE 13 October 2010:  CALF's English-language webshop is now open for business!

DVD now available in France via HEEZA

Related links:
Mirai Mizue’s official homepage
Follow Mirai Mizue on twitter

Related posts:
Atsushi Wada’s Day of Nose

Kei Oyama’s Hand Soap

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2010

TAMARA DREWE - who?

Stephen Frears has an odd body of work. He started off with spiky costume drama (DANGEROUS LIASONS), moved to equally spiky contemporary British drama (DIRTY PRETTY THINGS) but then segued into what can only be described as English heritage drama, with the banal MRS HENDERSON PRESENTS and the over-hyped TV drama THE QUEEN. His latest flick - an adaptation of Posy Simmonds Grauniad strip, continues his run of diminishing returns. It's a movie that, for all its lush location work and occasional stabs at spiky social commentary, is dangerously structurally imbalanced.

As far as I can tell, the problems stem from the source material - you can read it all online at the newspaper's site in about an hour. It's apparently based on Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd, but other than the fact that the central character is sexy and has three lovers, there are very few parallels. Not least because Tamara Drewe simply doesn't hold the centre of our attention in the way any eponymous heroine should.  In the strip, the centre of the story isn't Tamara Drewe at all - but Beth Hardiman, wife of an Ian Rankin-type crime novelist called Nicholas. She's fat, cheated-upon, taken-for-granted and generally quite bitchy. Essentially, she's as much as fault as her lecherous, narcissistic husband for the pitiful state of their marriage, insofar as she enables his shitty behaviour. She likes that he's dependent on her, and smothers him with baked goods and motherly attentions, rather than being his wife. The Hardimans are classic English middle-class yuppies, who've made money, buy a nice run-down farm in the country, and then fill it with Cath Kidston and Waitrose shopping, much to the ire of the locals who are bid out from the local housing market. (I aspire to being such a "banker-wanker"). The farm also serves as a writer's retreat, which suits them both just fine. Nicholas gets fawning acolytes - Beth has more people to mother and feel indispensable for. So basically, the two protagonists at the heart of the strip are pretty unlikeable, but at least you get what makes them tick.

And so the story goes, until Tamara Drewe turns up in hot pants, newly beautified by a nose job, baring all in her self-referential newspaper column. She decides to move into her late mother's house at Winnard's Farm, and write a novel - just like that. In the strip, we read her columns, but never read drafts of her book. We're meant to think she's not much cop at writing, but there's really not much else there. I have no idea what makes the girl tick - and maybe that's deliberate - maybe she's just meant to be a sex object - but that seems a weird authorial choice. Shouldn't we care about, and understand, the eponymous heroine of the strip? Anyways, following Hardy, Tamara has three potential suitors. First up is local gardener, Andy Cobb - earnest, nice, dull - presumably in the Gabriel Oak mould. We have no real understanding why he should be so interested in Tamara or vice versa - they seem entirely unsuited. But maybe I'm wrong - as neither is fleshed out as a character, who knows? Second is minor rock star, Ben aka Sergeant Troy. Except that he's not really a love-rat, and actually an okay guy, and basically, Tamara's never really at risk from him. Third up is Nicholas Hardiman - old, oleaginous author - who is never really at risk from Tamara in the way that Boldwood was at risk from Bathsheba. Yes, after a few quick shags he wants to finally leave Beth, but there's no subterranean violence. And without that deep sexual tension the motive of the plot can't be sexual violence - rather a couple of bored teenage chavs who send a few prank emails, and a herd of bored cows. Deus ex machina have never been as bizarre - okay - maybe Hardy's stampede, and then that odd scene of puncturing sheep's bellies - but the final strips - with two acts of violence that have no build-up, no foreboding atmosphere in the preceding columns - just seem random and insufficiently dealt with.

And so, now, we get the movie. This is, in essence, a very faithful adaptation. All the key characters are locations are there. The houses and farms look exactly like the script, and all of the better, spikier one-liners are kept in. The underlying tension between impoverished locals and wealthy second-home-owners is still there. And the most authentic part of the script - the insecurity and narcissism of writing - and the jealousy between writers - is translated wholesale. But screen-writer Moira Buffini has made several improvements - in particular, several of the characters are more convincingly drawn. Roger Allam's Nicholas Hardiman is far more sinister and slippery and real than in the strip and Tamsin Greig's Beth is less bitchy and more put-upon - in her portrayal of Beth you can see a million failed marriages where the wife has simply lost the ability to conceive of herself alone. Moira Buffini also does a good job in beefing up the role of writers-retreat-ee Glen McGreavey (Bill Camp). In the strip, he's just a contra-Nicholas - an academic, writing obscure books that no-one reads, utterly appreciative of Beth's nurturing - whereas Nicholas writes commercially successful nonsense and takes Beth for granted. In the movie, Glen becomes perhaps the most interesting character of all - standing for integrity and appreciation, but ultimately becoming just as slippery as Nicholas himself. Moreover, he proves once and for all that Beth is a co-dependent - looking for someone to mother and be used by, even when Nicholas is out of the picture.

But the biggest breakthrough - for better and worse - is in the characters of teenage chavs Jody (Jessica Barden) and Casey (Charlotte Christie). In the strip, they serve as a counter-point to the middle class angst at the farm and as a means to the Hardy-esque email that triggers Tamara's affair with Nicholas. They are bored, smoke in bus shelters, and are utterly obsessed with celebrity. But in the movie, partly because of the higher proportion of screen-time they get, and partly because of the quite superb performance by Jessica Barden, they completely steal the show. The angst of being stuck in a small town, knowing that nothing will ever happen unless you back yourself, and then realising that in the real world there are consequences - now that's an interesting story. Jody's journey from fantasist to realist is superbly essayed and deeply engaging.

Now here comes the problem with the movie. Tamara Drewe (Gemma Arterton) and Andy Cobb (Luke Evans) are as thinly sketched in the movie as in the strip. But Jody is far, far more interesting. And so, you end up with a movie wherein the supposed heroine is almost irrelevant, and certainly not the centre of the viewer's attention. No amount of witty one-liners, or glossy location photography, can offset that fundamental structural weakness.

Additional tags: Ben Davis, Mick Audsley, Leo Davis, Bill Camp, Luke Evans, Tamsin Greig, Jessica Barden, Charlotte Christie, James Naughtie, John Bett, Josie Taylor, Bronagh Gallagher, Zahra Ahmadi

TAMARA DREW played Cannes 2010 and plays Toronto 2010. It was released in France in July and is currently on release in the UK. It is released next week in Belgium, in the USA on October 8th and in Germany on December 30th.

Random DVD Round-Up - WHIP IT

WHIP IT is a pretty conventional, but charming, coming-of-age flick directed by Drew Barrymore and starring JUNO's Ellen Page. It feels old fashioned - in the way the sports movies and coming-of-age dramas used to be, before they got satirised in movies like DODGEBALL. The kitsch feel stems partly from the deliberately down-at-heel suburban production design, and from the fact that the heroine is torn between her mother's obsession with beauty pageants and her own attraction to Roller Derby - and both seem anachronistic. But it also stems a little from the straightforward narrative arc, the fact that the happy ending is never really in doubt and the rather simplistic shooting style. The fact that this is Barrymore's debut directorial feature shows in her rather unimaginative handling of the Roller Derby scenes in particular.

Ellen Page plays seventeen-year old, suburban, Bliss Cavendar. Her mother, seeing it as a route out of town, makes her enter beauty pageants where she has to extol traditional feminine virtues. But Bliss decides to rebel by lying about her age and joining a Roller Derby league. She meets tough women with real lives, learns to be aggressive, and gets her first boyfriend. But, as in the way of these three act coming of age flick (see WAYNE'S WORLD, even), Bliss ends up pissing off everyone who loves her - her best friend, her mum, her dad, and potentially her team. Of course, in the movies, as opposed to real life, when you have a bratty teen "coming of age", everyone is remarkably forgiving and loving.

So, all in all, you have to ask what really is the point of WHIP IT? A movie so familiar it feels like a US version of BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM subbing roller debry for soccer.

Additional tags: Robert Yeoman, Dylan Tichenor, The Section Quartet, Juliette Lewis, Andrew Wilson, Landon Pigg, Alia Shawkat, Zoe Bell, Ari Graynor, Carlo Alban, Daniel Stern, Shauna Cross

WHIP IT played Toronto 2009 and was released in 2009/2010. It is available on DVD and on iTunes.

Nagi Noda (野田 凪, 1973-2008)

Today marks the second anniversary of the death of Nagi Noda (野田 凪, 1973-2008), the brilliant pop artist and fashion icon. Not only did she make weird and wonderful videos (short films, music videos, and commercials), but she also had her own line of stuffed animals called HanPanda, designed unusual hair art called Hair Hats, and designed her own fashion line called Broken Label in collaboration with Mark Ryden. She won many awards for her work including the prestigious Bronze Lion at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in 2006 for her Coca-Cola commercial “What Goes Around Comes Around”. Although her life was tragically cut short by injuries she sustained after a traffic accident, her vibrant creative vision lives on to inspire younger artists.

In her memory, I have assembled as complete a videography as I could find. For more information, videos, and slideshows, visit her official homepage. For an extra special treat, check out the making of Nagi Noda's video for Scissor Sisters:



Videography

2000 Short Film  “46 Wrinkles”

2002 Short Film  “Small Square Stories”

2002 Commercial  Laforet “Butterfly Ribbons”

2002 Commercial  Laforet “Autumn of appetite” / “Preparation is troublesome”

2002 Commercial  Laforet “It is Christmas Soon” / “Make-up is troublesome”

2003 Short Film  “Wedding Dress, Mourning Dress, Party Dress”

2003 Short Film  “Small Love Stories”

2003 Music Video  Yuki “Sentimental Journey”



2003 Short Film  "A Small Love Story About Alex and Juliet"



2003 Commercial  Laforet “I get married smooooothly”

2003 Commercial  Laforet “Imaginary pregnancy”

2003 Commercial  Laforet “They become large in a hurry for Christmas (grow up)”

2003 Commercial  Laforet “They become large in a hurry for Christmas (kiss)”

2003 Commercial  GEKKEIKAN “GEKKEIKAN”



2003 Commercial  Suntory “Latte Latte”

2003 Commercial  Suntory “Hot Latte Latte”

2003 Commercial  Suntory “Oolong Cha”



2004 Short Film  “Mariko Takahashi’s Fitness Video for Being Appraised as an ‘Ex-Fat Girl’”

• A surreal parody of Susan Powter’s first work out video.

2004 Commericial  Laforet “Cat Walk with Shadows”



2004 Commercial  Laforet “Animal Girl”



2005 Animation – Opening Credits  "Honey and Clover"



2005 Music Video  OGIYAHAGI “Must Be”



2005 Music Video  OGIYAHAGI “I love your face”



2006 Commercial  Coca Cola “What Goes Around Comes Around”

• Music by Jack White

2006 Commercial  MONOPRIX “Vegetables”


Monoprix Vegetables (Nagi Noda) from Cosmo Sapiens on Vimeo.

2006 Commercial  MONOPRIX “Mascara”


Monoprix Mascara (by Nagi Noda) from Cosmo Sapiens on Vimeo.

2006 Commercial  MONOPRIX “Jungle”


Monoprix Jungle (Nagi Noda) from Cosmo Sapiens on Vimeo.

2006 TV Ecocolo

2006 Music Video  TIGA “Far From Home”



2007 Commercial  “b+ab spring summer 2008”



2007 Music Video  Scissor Sisters “She’s My Man”


Scissor Sisters - She's My Man
Hochgeladen von G4briHell. - Entdecke weitere Musik Videos. 

2008  Commercial LG Stream Power